Jared Goff’s next contract

[Topweasel]

Was just thinking ... would the Lions seem like a better destination for a FA QB or a FA WR? I think it's the former (QB would want to play with Jamo, Amon Ra, Laporta, Gibbs, Montgomery, OL ... more than a WR would want to come play in Detroit).

Don't like having thoughts like this ... I know the record, the success etc ... but I still don't believe in Goff that much. When you don't have that strong of an arm and no mobility ... I just can't. He is smart tho

I have been meaning to get back to this question. I know we kind of got answers. But the other day the Stafford Sucks thread came up, and I saw a quote that was from one of the terrrible triplets responding to me from like 7+ years ago. It made me re-read the first 10 or so pages and it was about those three actually make any suggestions of moves other than "Stafford must go or its a failed season". Catching this question brings up some but not all of those same feelings. So the question becomes who in the next 2 years does the Lions have an opportunity to get and be an upgrade.

This season who looks to be possibly free.

Russell Wilson? I'd think this would be a downgrade.
Joe Flacco? Downgrade
Mitch Trubisky? Downgrade
Jimmy G.? Downgrade.
Kurt Cousins? Maybe slight upgrade, but only for 1-3 years.
Justin Fields? Major Downgrade as a passer.
Mac Jones? Major Downgrade.
Zach Wilson? Major Downgrade
Drew Lock? Downgrade

Not everyone but not seeing any real upgrades. 2 Seasons out would be harder to see. Someone could have a falling out like Goff. I am just going to stop at this this offseason. Then ask you, you asked the question. Name someone you think the Lions could go after that would be an upgrade. Keep in mind any top draft pick will probably take 2-3 1sts to move up and grab.

[edindetroit]

[Tom]

I would look into Jones or Wilson as a backup. Maybe sitting on the bench and getting time to work with no pressure would be good for those guys.

I think someone like Atlanta or Pittsburgh would look at making a deal for Fields as their starter.

[chemiclord]

I think the Lions are aiming to give Hendon an earnest shot to be "the guy" in the future, and they aren't terribly concerned about making any additional moves outside of maybe roster fodder.

Goff will get paid, but paid in a way that won't make him an albatross on the cap after 2 or 3 years.

[Newbomb Turk]

The Lions believed in Jared Goff, and that’s all he needed to come roaring back


The Wednesday before the Lions beat the Vikings to win the NFC North for the first time in his lifetime, Jared Goff stood dead-eyed in front of his locker and, as usual, refused to give reporters an inch of juicy copy.

“We don’t carry the weight of the last 30 years here,” he said.

It wasn’t until most of the crowd of media members dispersed to find their next victim and a hanger-on scribe asked about his Tuesday off-day activity that his whole demeanor changed.

“It was great,” Goff said, smiling and making eye contact. “Thank you so much. We had a great time.”

Goff spent Tuesday afternoon at a high school where he’s partnered with a program that provides students with college scholarships. Goff was there a few days before Christmas with a special gift: scholarship certificates. He sat around a table with the students, ate pizza and chatted with them about their goals.

Goff declined to sit down with The Athletic for this story. His minutes and hours are carefully planned out, and with the success he and the Lions have been having, there will be no breaking from that routine.

And, frankly, he’s not interested in rehashing the Rams’ rejection that cut him down, made his rehabilitation with the Lions one of the NFL’s best comeback stories and set up Sunday night’s much-discussed wild-card matchup in Detroit.

In January 2021, the Rams and Lions agreed on a deal that sent Goff, multiple first-round picks and a third-round pick to Detroit for Matthew Stafford. And ever since then, despite Goff’s steady improvement and the Lions’ repeated declarations of loyalty, a persistent question remains: Do the Lions need a quarterback?
Goff has passed for more than 12,000 yards and 78 touchdowns in three seasons in Detroit, helping lift the Lions from also-rans to division champs.

When general manager Brad Holmes said last January, “I never really deemed him as a bridge, I think everybody else did,” that was somehow an understatement.

During the long winless stretch of the 2021 season, a Detroit newspaper asked, “If they couldn’t win in 12 years with Matthew Stafford, then why would they suddenly start winning with a worse player at the game’s most important position?” Lions fans chanted backup David Blough’s name during a game in which Goff was sacked five times. This year, Ryan Fitzpatrick called Goff a “poor man’s Matt Ryan” (Goff didn’t like that), and fans booed during a multi-turnover game in November Detroit ended up winning to improve to 8-2.

Maybe the Lions should have picked a quarterback No. 2 overall in 2022. Maybe they should have traded their two first-round picks to take a top prospect in 2023. Maybe they should have made an offer to Lamar Jackson.

They didn’t.

“We got a quarterback, and thank God we got one,” head coach Dan Campbell said last March when asked about Jackson. “We’re good.”

They have cultivated an environment that doesn’t abide questions about whether or not Goff is good. He’s been given more control of the offense than most NFL quarterbacks will ever have. And that trust has allowed him to succeed. And even when he doesn’t, belief in him never wavers.

“If not Jared, then who?” running back David Montgomery said. “Jared is the perfect person and quarterback for what we need.”

“He has been unflappable,” Blough said. “Whenever somebody is out to get him, or somebody writes something, it just rolls off his back. … Either he doesn’t hear it or he acts like he doesn’t hear it. And it’s unbelievable how he’s responded in the last three seasons here, and that’s why we are where we are. Because he allowed himself to grow, and he’s playing the best football of his career.”

---

Andrew Whitworth knew what he wanted to ask his former teammate.

The longtime NFL tackle and current Amazon broadcaster sat down with Goff ahead of the Lions’ Week 4 Thursday night matchup with the Packers. As a close friend of both the quarterback and Rams head coach Sean McVay, Whitworth was uniquely qualified to dive into Goff’s Rams trauma, and there was something that stuck with him for nearly three years.

Shortly after he found out about the trade, Goff went over to Whitworth’s house. He was crushed and disappointed. The quarterback’s end-of-season exit meeting with McVay, postponed by the coach, was scheduled for later that week. Even though he was no longer a Ram, Goff still wanted to go.

“Jan. 30, you’re blindsided with the fact that the Rams traded you to the Lions,” Whitworth said to Goff in the interview. “I thought it was so interesting that you still wanted, after the trade went through, to go sit down with Sean. Why was that so important to you to have that meeting with him?”

By the end of the 2020 season, McVay was frustrated with Goff. Goff was equally frustrated with McVay. In the middle was Whitworth, who said the two complained about each other, but not to each other. “It just got quiet between both of them,” Whitworth said. “There just was no communication whatsoever.”

Goff and McVay are very different personalities who worked well together until they hit adversity. After the Super Bowl loss to the Patriots in which the Rams’ offense managed just 3 points, NFL defenses figured out parts of L.A.’s previously unstoppable offense. As McVay searched for a new identity and he and the organization became even more Super Bowl-obsessed, Goff struggled to keep up.

Whitworth said McVay has grown since, but at that time, the coach was image-conscious and chased satisfaction in accomplishments. “Sean was very driven to be exactly what he was,’ Whitworth said. “And that is, ‘I want to be this guru. I want to be one of the youngest, most successful people in the world. …If you don’t want to chase success with that kind of intensity, it’s going to be hard for you to keep up.'”

Goff, on the other hand, is a people person, “a heart-led guy,” Whitworth said, who has a “passion for just wanting to do well for the people around him.” And he didn’t have to keep up with McVay for much longer.

The partnership between McVay and Goff lasted for four productive seasons before running its course.

Whitworth wanted to tell a national audience that Goff insisted on getting answers from the coach who decided he wasn’t good enough. What had he done wrong? What was it that made him tradable?

“I think it’s one of the most courageous, tough things you could ever do,” Whitworth said. “Imagine getting fired from your dream job. And you have the guts to go in and talk to the boss and just ask how you could have been better.”

Goff told Whitworth that he earned some peace of mind from his conversation with McVay, though he didn’t go into the specifics. “It was less about what Sean would exactly say,” Whitworth said. “That was Jared standing up for himself, being like, I’m gonna make you sit down and tell me. We can end this relationship, but at least give me my closure.”

When asked about the end of Goff’s Rams tenure ahead of this weekend’s game, McVay said the transition could have been handled better.

“The further you get away from it, the more that you try to grow as a man, as a person, as the leader that you want to become, he deserved better than the way that it all went down,” McVay said. “I’ll acknowledge that. I think he knows that too. … I think we’re all better being able to look back on those things, and I do have more appreciation for him as time goes on.”

---

When wide receiver Josh Reynolds arrived in Detroit midway through the 2021 season, the Lions were 0-9. He’d never been on a losing team, so he didn’t know what to expect. But if he didn’t know their record, he could have sworn that they had a shot at the postseason.

“It was really weird,” he said. “It was almost the exact same as how it feels now. … Everybody had their arms together like, look, we’re going in a direction.”

Now the Lions are in the playoffs, and Goff is a big reason why the culture feels so steady.

“That first season he was here, when we won three games, and now, where we’re at 10 wins, he’s the same guy every single day,” center Frank Ragnow said in December, before the Lions went on to finish the regular season 12-5. “And I respect the crap out of him for it. He’s as consistent as it gets.”

Goff arrived in Detroit a little bit broken, and the Lions coaching staff was intentional about building him back up. “We wanted Jared,” quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell said. “And once he got here we embraced him as our quarterback.”

In Brunell’s 19-year career as an NFL quarterback, he was traded, cut, benched and declared a franchise quarterback. He knows the power that comes with support. “There’s nothing better than playing for a team that believes in you and playing for a coaching staff that said, ‘Hey, this is our guy, and we’re gonna put the resources around him,'” Brunell said.

At the Week 9 bye of the 2021 season — and after the 0-8 start — Campbell took over play calling from former offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn, whose playbook wasn’t making sense to the players, and partnered with passing game coordinator Ben Johnson to retool the Lions offense.

It was around then that Goff started to get more comfortable “wearing the Big Hat,” as Blough puts it. Goff started making more protection calls and checking into different plays at the line of scrimmage. He threw 11 touchdowns against just two interceptions after Campbell and Johnson took over.

In L.A., especially during the 2018 Super Bowl season, the Rams frequently went no-huddle, hurrying to the line so McVay could see how defenses lined up and communicate with Goff as long as possible. The quarterback simply had to do as he was told. “Training wheels were on,” said Reynolds, who was on those Los Angeles teams with Goff. “McVay had more of his hand in the offense with where he wanted the ball to go. And here, it’s more of JG’s offense.”

Johnson was promoted to offensive coordinator after the 2021 season, and he’s the one responsible for fitting Goff with the Big Hat and empowering him to take more control over the offense. Goff responded by passing for 4,438 yards and posting a career-best touchdown-to-interception ratio (29 to 7) in 2022 while leading the Lions to a breakout nine-win campaign.

“You can look at the stats and you can look at the passing numbers,” Johnson said. “The things that he handles with the pre-snap operation is really second-to-none. There aren’t many quarterbacks in this league doing what he does. He’s such a smart player and that tends to get overlooked sometimes.”

“If you hold somebody’s hand their whole life, then they’re not gonna know how to do anything on their own,” Reynolds said. “If you finally let the reins off a little bit and then let them kind of learn by failure, you learn.”

There have been plenty of learning experiences in Detroit, even as the Lions turned into contenders this season. Goff threw three interceptions in a Week 11 home win against Chicago, fumbled three times the next week in a loss to Green Bay and turned the ball over three more times in a loss at Chicago in Week 14.

During a similar spate of turnovers in Goff’s last season in L.A., McVay went public with his criticism. “Our quarterback’s got to take better care of the football,” he said after Goff turned it over three times in a 2020 loss to the 49ers.

“Hearing everything is your fault, it starts to mess with your confidence a little bit,” Reynolds said. “Whether you were the most confident guy in the world or not, you keep hearing something every day by your employers, it’s tough.”

This time, Goff’s head coach stood by him. Campbell’s message? “Cut it loose.”

“One of the biggest reasons we’re sitting at 10 wins right now is him playing loose,” Campbell said ahead of Detroit’s Week 16 matchup with Minnesota. “Just trust what your eyes see, play the progression and throw with conviction.”

This isn’t a strategy specific to handling the quarterback, according to Campbell, who said he tries not to single out any player publicly.

“Just because I don’t openly go after a player in the media doesn’t mean we don’t talk behind the scenes and in my office one-on-one about what we need to do better,” he said. “As long as you’re open and honest with the player one-on-one and they know that you see them for what it is, or see the performance for what it is — good or bad — you can respect that, and that’s how you get better. And that’s what I’ve been able to do with him.

“That actually gives him confidence, and he knows that there’s still a trust and a belief in him. And that is important.”

It’s not that Goff can’t take the public criticism, it’s just that it serves no productive purpose with him. The quarterback motivated by his relationships with coaches and teammates has been reborn playing for a head coach who solves his problems in the same way — with a hug and a kind word, and most importantly, together.

“He feels genuinely appreciated by the organization and by the fan base,” said Goff’s agent, Ryan Tollner. “It’s exciting to him to exude his best traits, this level of resilience. Because that’s what it feels like Detroit is all about.”

---

[Newbomb Turk]

If the Lions never viewed Goff as a bridge, the feeling was mutual. Soon after he found out he was going to be traded to Detroit, he started thinking about how he could get involved in the community.

“We actually skipped over a lot of things you would think about, like moving logistics,” said Goff’s manager Reese Dickens. “He said, ‘I want to provide an impact in Detroit. I want to make that my home for as long as I am there.'”

Which is how Goff wound up spending that off-day December afternoon at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in Detroit, eating pizza and chopping it up with high school students.

In 2020, Goff built a clothing brand — JG16 — to use as a philanthropic vehicle, and in 2022, he partnered with students to create Detroit-themed designs for the merch line. For the last two seasons, Goff has met with the student-led design team to give feedback. He matches the sale of every clothing item sold, and those proceeds become the participating students’ college scholarships. After the first year of the partnership, Goff’s team asked to run it back this season.

William Edwards, 15, received his scholarship certificate from Goff last month. Edwards has been artistic for as long as he can remember — he’s interested in becoming an architect — and created the Motown design in this year’s JG16 line.

“I love to design things and make art, but I never thought I would see something I drew actually out there being made,” Edwards said. He’d never met a professional athlete before Goff, who he thought was a nice and regular guy.

“That’s not normal,” said Kuhu Saha, co-founder and executive director of Give Merit, the nonprofit that runs the program. “You’re eating pizza after school and hanging out with this guy who has in many ways changed the trajectory of the Detroit Lions.”

Saha said she feels comfortable going to Goff and his team with new ideas, rare for partnerships with athletes or celebrities, with whom there are typically strict parameters.

“He finds education to be so valuable, but also the creativity and the dreaming aspect of it,” Saha said. “Our kids asked him a lot about football and being resilient and persistent, and how he honed his craft, and there’s so many parallels between the dreaming and the investment in young people.”

Goff started looking for opportunities to get involved in the community as soon as he was traded to Detroit. (Courtesy of Give Merit)

Detroit feels like home, and Goff wants to remain the Lions’ quarterback for as long as he can. His contract is up after the 2024 season, which means Holmes faces a decision on an extension this offseason. Tollner said he’s confident the Lions will extend Goff early this offseason.

“They said all the right things to Jared and to me, that (this season) is not about him having to prove himself for another year,” Tollner said. “Inevitably, players always feel that way. If you don’t make a long-term commitment, then they feel like you don’t completely believe in them.”

A new deal might finally convince the rest of the league that Goff is the long-term answer in Detroit, but players already seem to be buying in, including those who signed with the Lions last offseason in part because of their situation at the most important position.

“It was big, being able to go somewhere where I can have a quarterback who would run the entire offense,” said Montgomery, who signed with Detroit from Chicago.

“It made me motivated because I know I don’t gotta worry about having a quarterback,” safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson said. “I know I got somebody. ”

And as Goff stood on the verge of that long-awaited division title, the Lions’ first in 30 years, it sounded like Detroit got somebody who found some perspective.

“Sometimes things that you think are bad that are happening to you end up being the best for you if you use them the right way,” he said. “You don’t realize it in the moment, but now looking back on it, I don’t know I would have grown or been the quarterback I am now.”

Johnson, Goff’s partner in this offensive comeback, is perhaps the hottest head coaching candidate in this cycle. He’ll likely be moving on to lead his own team in a few short weeks. And when that happens, you can set your watch to the familiar refrain.

Will the next offensive coordinator be a good fit? Is Goff just a product of Johnson’s system? Does Detroit need a quarterback?

But Goff won’t hear any of it. Or he’ll act like he doesn’t.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; images: iStock, Rey Del Rio / Getty Images)

[Topweasel]

I think the Lions are aiming to give Hendon an earnest shot to be "the guy" in the future, and they aren't terribly concerned about making any additional moves outside of maybe roster fodder.

Goff will get paid, but paid in a way that won't make him an albatross on the cap after 2 or 3 years.

I don't know. It screams of Holmes attempts to hedge his bet. There are a lot of similarities in his and Goffs play (while being more mobile). I think they picked him to not have a backup plan if they decided to resign Goff, but if Goff got injured in 2024 and beyond, not to have a fall off.

I think Holmes and Dan would be more then happy to have Hooker only play in preseason and clean up.

Also I go back to Dan's comment. It's a lot easier to get worse at QB then better. I don't think Hooker was ever thought of to actually be Goffs replacement and I don't think it's a smart thought process to think we should be having him play, specially with Goff playing as he is (on pace with the best of the league).

[-Deborah-]

image.png

[ghandi]

Really we have no idea whatsoever if he can even be a legitimate backup...We wont know until at least preseason, and even then that often isnt that great of an indicator......

[froot loops]

Hooker has a very similar challenge to what Goff had coming out of college. He played in a college air raid offense means a lot of non-NFL throws. So we'll see.

[chemiclord]

I don't know. It screams of Holmes attempts to hedge his bet. There are a lot of similarities in his and Goffs play (while being more mobile). I think they picked him to not have a backup plan if they decided to resign Goff, but if Goff got injured in 2024 and beyond, not to have a fall off.

I think Holmes and Dan would be more then happy to have Hooker only play in preseason and clean up.

Also I go back to Dan's comment. It's a lot easier to get worse at QB then better. I don't think Hooker was ever thought of to actually be Goffs replacement and I don't think it's a smart thought process to think we should be having him play, specially with Goff playing as he is (on pace with the best of the league).

What I mean by that isn't that they're going dump Goff in 2 or 3 years no matter what. They're going to give Hendon a shot to win the job, and if he outplays Goff, the deal Goff has will likely be such that he can be moved without too much trouble. If Hendon doesn't win the job, they'll still have Goff for [x] number of years or whatever.

[Mainevent]

I like Hooker and all, just have a difficult time getting excited for a developmental prospect that is 26 years old.

[Tom]

Hooker has a very similar challenge to what Goff had coming out of college. He played in a college air raid offense means a lot of non-NFL throws. So we'll see.

I’ve heard similar comments to this from others but I don’t know what it means exactly. Is it that it’s not an offense similar to what’s run in the pros so it’s a huge adjustment?

[chemiclord]

I’ve heard similar comments to this from others but I don’t know what it means exactly. Is it that it’s not an offense similar to what’s run in the pros so it’s a huge adjustment?

Tennessee played a more college-style "spread" offense that was predicated on one read and throw, and a lot of RPO. Basically, he has one choice to make and if its not there, tuck it down and run. So there are a lot of question marks about how Hendon will fare having to survey the entire field and identify hot reads, etc.

[froot loops]

One of the big things is about the adjustment is being able to play under center. It's hard to get the footwork down this late in your career. I know Goff never took a meaningful snap under center at.Cal, what I saw if Hooker at Tennessee it was all shotgun, not sure how he did at Va Tech.